But after the state takeover of the district in June 2023, Malik said the environmental science magnet school in Eastwood, which they loved for the tenured teachers and welcoming community, began to change. Her child's art teacher was reassigned, and students were discouraged from reading books after finishing their work, she said.
After the school's principal and several teachers departed in the spring, Malik knew they had to go. Her daughter is now enrolled in The Kipling School, a private campus.
"We were blindsided all year with the changes that were happening," Malik said.
Malik is one of thousands of parents who pulled their child from HISD this year. Several told the Chronicle they were leaving the district due to the stringent reforms, plummeting morale, principal and teacher departures or cookie-cutter lessons that they said did not account for a child's individual learning needs during the previous academic year.
"I don't want to risk another year of her being frustrated with learning," Malik said.
Anticipated HISD Enrollment Declines
HISD's reported "membership," or the number of students enrolled in the district on a specific day, was about 170,800 on Thursday, down by about 9,000 students, or 5 percent, compared to the fourth day of school last year, according to district data. The early data, however, does not reflect the official enrollment count of the state's largest school district.
The district's official enrollment will not be finalized until Oct. 25, but it appears to be on track to drop below 180,000 students this year. It reported an enrollment of about 184,000 students last year, and budget documents project enrollment to drop to about 179,600 this year, which would be its lowest enrollment in at least a decade.
State-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles said "people have different circumstances" so HISD enrollment will fluctuate for the first few weeks of the school year, which started two weeks earlier than last year. He said during a news conference last week that he is going to see where the dust settles before analyzing enrollment or retention strategies.
"Just like every year, students enroll over the next two or three weeks," Miles said. "We will have kids coming to school all the way until Labor Day. I wish every kid would come on Aug. 12 or the very first day of school, but that doesn't happen. The numbers are changing every day ... but we feel confident that we're going to keep growing in our enrollment until September."
Arianne Newcomer, however, says her family will not be returning to HISD in the next few weeks. She was considering sending four of her children back to their HISD schools until the beginning of August, when she learned that their school hours would be extended — meaning less time together as a family during the new academic year.
She thought about the "hollow zombie faces" that she had subconsciously overlooked when her children came home last year, after spending hours in what she described as a stressful learning culture where there was no room for error. Then, she got a pit in her stomach thinking about sending her children back to the district they've attended for the past several years.
"My kids came home noticeably more stressed and tightly wound, where it was like they didn't know that they could let their guard down," Newcomer said. "They individually told me that the observation of their teachers by unnamed personnel from HISD was very stressful. So the observing of teachers, which affected them in some way, trickled down to the students."
Instead of heading back to an HISD campus last week, her children began attending Texas Virtual Schools, a free online K-12 program that she says is much better for her kids due to the calmer and more flexible learning environment.
"I feel like 100 pounds have been lifted from all of us, and I feel like we didn't even want to admit to each other, or know, how heavy our backpacks, so to speak, were, but it's so much easier on every level," Newcomer said. "I see so many benefits. The subconscious stress of having to be performing for eight hours is gone. We're also in the comfort of our home."
'Something Unique That's Happening in HISD'
Virginia Snodgrass Rangel, an associate professor in the University of Houston's College of Education, said although HISD saw improved performance on the reading and math State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, the culture changes in the district's schools have driven some students out — and it will be tough to convince them to come back.
"Culture is probably an important reason to consider why families might leave, and I hope that the district can figure out how to ensure a basic level of quality, while also making sure schools continue to be a good place to learn and a good place for teachers and principals to work," Snodgrass Rangel said.
Similarly to last year, the district's data shows membership declines are largest within schools in the New Education System program that was implemented last year, although the number of students at non-NES schools has declined as well. The NES model includes standardized curriculum that teachers must follow, extended campus hours, timed lessons and the conversion of libraries to Team Centers.
NES campuses reported an 8 percent decline in the number of students enrolled on the fourth day, while membership at non-NES campuses decreased by less than 3 percent. The starkest divide was among middle schools, where NES programs lost about 11 percent of students compared to less than a 1 percent decline at non-NES campuses.
The district's declining enrollment, however, is not new this year, but a yearslong trend faced by several large urban school districts, and it predates the appointment of the board and superintendent to the 274-campus district. Measured every October, enrollment in the last decade peaked in the 2016-17 school year at 216,106.
"I don't know that HISD is unique overall (in its enrollment decline,) but when you disaggregate these numbers, the numbers are clearly driven by the NES schools, and that suggests that there's something unique that's happening in HISD that likely is connected to the reform," Snodgrass Rangel said.
Future enrollment declines will cause continued financial challenges for HISD, which faced a $528 million budget gap due, in part, to lower enrollment, the loss of federal COVID-19 relief funds and flat state education funding. Texas funds schools based on the average daily student attendance rate that starts at $6,160 per student, so fewer students means less money.
Lower enrollment "just means overall, there will be less money coming, not only from the state, but also from the federal government to cover costs that, in a lot of cases, are fixed," Snodgrass Rangel said. "Those fixed costs being things relating to facilities (and) school buildings. Those costs don't go away, even if you have a building that is not full."
End-of-Year Principal, Teacher Turnover
Former Herod Elementary school parent Conor Johnston said he's leaving the district because he felt Miles' reforms were not appropriate for his children after he observed that his daughter was not being given additional instruction or challenges for topics she had already mastered.
"What I found for the last, really, half of her fourth-grade year is that she was not learning anything new," Johnston said, adding his daughter said she was bored and did not feel challenged.
He and his wife ultimately decided to pull their youngest child out of HISD after an exodus of teachers. Herod had 17 teacher departures in June, a Houston Chronicle analysis of district records show. The flood of teacher departures coincided with the sudden termination of Herod Elementary's principal, Jessica Berry.
With their eldest daughters in private school, the family talked about sending their youngest to private school rather than doing fifth grade in HISD as planned. She started St. Thomas More Parish School in August.
Johnston's daughter didn't understand what was happening or why people were protesting outside of her school, but she knew one of her favorite teachers — who taught her older sisters — was leaving.
The parents had multiple conversations with their daughter about the teacher departures and the protest at Herod after Berry was told to resign.
"She did not understand why everybody was so angry at the protest, and I tried to explain that as well," Johnston said. "'It's like playing a game with your sisters, and your sisters change the rules mid-game,' which is what it felt like for a lot of us last year. That the rules were being changed mid-flight, mid-year."
Like Johnston's family, Dina Patel said her child's enrollment in private school was an end-of-year decision. As Miles' changes began to fall into place, Patel's family offered earlier in the year enrollment elsewhere to their son attending Meyerland Performing and Visual Arts Middle School. Her daughter, content at Bellaire High School, stayed in HISD.
Patel's son wasn't interested in leaving Meyerland, but as the year progressed, she said morale sank, especially after the district asked then-principal Jose Auden Sarabia to resign or face board termination.
Patel protested the ultimatum given to Sarabia alongside community members. Her son asked to enroll in Trafton Academy, where he knew some friends and the baseball coach.
Patel said the family felt torn about leaving because there are many families in the community they are close to and her children have known since kindergarten.
"We felt like we were kind of selling out by leaving and saying we're giving up the fight," Patel said. "And a lot of our friends told us that that wasn't the case, and if they had the means, they probably would do the same thing. It's all about doing what's in the best interest of your kids. And getting them the best education and the best environment was our goal."
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